


Customer Service

by AutumnAgain



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical The Lonely Content (The Magnus Archives), Customer Service & Tech Support, Gen, Season/Series 04, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), author is american
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:08:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26844892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnAgain/pseuds/AutumnAgain
Summary: Statement of Petra Lewis, regarding Loneliness and those who only think they understand it.(The Archivist goes to the grocery store for a little snack)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Customer Service

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time posting an OC-centric fic. The story is set sometime in Season 4.

There is a woman stocking the grocery store shelves. She wears the same uniform as every other employee, although her name tag is absent. Nothing about her draws the eye, and the few other customers ignore her entirely. Still, there is something about her.

The Archivist approaches. “Hello,” he says, and if there is something predatory in the tone he does not notice.

Petra Lewis turns slowly, eyes wide with fear and shock. No one has spoken to her directly in a very long time. She feels Seen, for what is possibly the first time ever. She stumbles over the standard response, drilled in by years of customer service. “Is there anything I can help you with, sir?” Her voice only shakes a little.

“You have a story,” says the Archivist. “ **Tell me** .”

“A story? I don’t-- I’m no one. Sir, if you don’t need anything from this store I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” She reaches for her own god, preparing to strike back or flee, but she is pinned in the Archivist’s Sight, and the Lonely is slow to respond, slow enough for the Archivist to once again Ask.

“Petra Lewis.  **What happened to you** ?”

She gasps, finally realizing exactly what she’s facing. There is no escape, not for her, not now. She will answer his questions.

“I should have realized. As soon as you walked in, I should have realized what you were, but I try to avoid the cults and families and institutes and whatever else. They ignore me and I ignore them and everything is fine. Are you with the Magnus Institute, or are you an unaffiliated Watcher? It doesn’t matter, I suppose, but I know I hate it when people assume I’m with the Lukas family.” She glares, eyes distant and fists tightening. “They don’t understand anything. You know Peter Lukas asked me to marry him once? Some nonsense about “continuing the family line”, as if getting married and raising children can ever be separated from attachment and connection. If you don’t want to raise your kids, you shouldn’t have them. If you don’t want to spend time with another person, you shouldn’t get married. It’s that simple. If you have an entire family that agrees with your politics and religion and provides you with generational wealth you can never be truly alone. I hear they even meet up for funerals! What part of that says anything about loneliness? It’s fear of Death, if anything. Have you ever met the Lukases? Heard them try to justify themselves?”

“I have not,” says the Archivist. “Although I know of them. And I do work in the Magnus Institute. I am the Archivist.”

“Ah,” says Petra. “I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but you’re very different from Gertrude Robinson.”

“You knew her?”

“Only by reputation. I have some of her work framed.” She laughs a little. “I’m not stupid, Archivist, and I don’t feel the need to get involved in everyone else’s plots. Is it true that Peter Lukas is running the Magnus Institute now? The Tundra has been docked far longer than usual, and I’m running out ideas for graffiti.”

“He is.” Petra looks even more disgusted.

“And here I thought he couldn’t sink any lower. What about this is Lonely? Ask him about his Ritual some time. Ask him why I’m talking to you right now, instead of living in blissful solitude. Make him admit it, please.”

“ **Tell me about yourself, Petra** ,” the Archivist admonishes. Petra has a story, and he needs it.

“Fine. Okay. As long as you leave, after. I need to finish stocking; Marlene has trouble, what with her arthritis, but Jeff keeps putting her on the schedule for it.

“It started when I was young. My parents lost custody -- the reason isn’t important, but they weren’t terribly sad to see me gone -- and I ended up in a series of group homes. The other kids would act out on purpose, or try and suck up to the foster parents in the hopes of getting more attention, but I was happiest being overlooked. I was never bullied, but I had trouble connecting with my foster siblings or my classmates. I always felt like there were other things, other people, that they would be better off spending their time on, so I never approached anyone, really, and I suppose I was right, because no one ever approached me, either. I’m sure none of them can remember my name, now. I didn’t mind, not really. I liked to people watch, and it seemed like connections and attention just opened them up to getting hurt. My classmates were arguing with their friends, sobbing over breakups, worrying about their siblings, and I was fine. If you don’t have something, you don’t have to worry about losing it.

“Eventually, I aged out, and I started working. Not here, but somewhere very similar. The sort of place where they hire you as soon as you walk in the door and no one bothers to learn your name. Everyone only sees a uniform. It wasn’t the best job in the world, but it paid enough for me to afford to join a flatshare with people I barely had to interact with. I cleaned up after myself, took out the rubbish when it was my turn, and avoided any major conflicts. It was fine.

“The trouble with working customer service is the customers. Most of them are fine, unremarkable, and a few of them are funny or kind or interesting, but every so often you get someone who thinks that the world revolves around them, and people like me only exist to cater to their whims. God forbid if we can’t!

“Well, one day, there was this woman, absolutely furious that we were out of her favorite brand of shampoo, and I just… couldn’t deal with it. I was the only one in that part of the store, because Lyndsay was in the back sobbing after her boyfriend dumped her over text, and Judy was trying to comfort her, which left Jim to work the register alone and me to try and restock the frozen foods, which had been sitting out for so long they were starting to defrost, and I did not have time for her nonsense. She was stalking towards me, and I knew I was in for a lecture, and I begged anything that could hear me that she would keep walking. And she did. It was as though she didn’t notice me at all, even though I was right there. She wandered around the store for a bit, confused and worried when she couldn’t find any employees not buffered by a line of customers who would have her head for cutting in line, and then she just left. It felt good, not being noticed.

“It became a habit. When there was a customer I didn’t want to deal with, I would reach out to this… thing… that I hadn’t realized was there all along, and I would disappear. The more I did it, the easier it was. I barely had to try, and soon enough I was completely invisible to customers. I couldn’t work the register anymore, but more often than not my coworkers didn’t notice me either, so they didn’t ask. It happened everywhere, at shops and restaurants and at home. I was a ghost who hadn’t yet gotten the memo.

“When my flatmates called a meeting without inviting me, and asked why they hadn’t found anyone for the empty bedroom, I realized that I was as good as dead. I went to work, because I didn’t know what else to do, and no one acknowledged me.

“No one acknowledged me, and I couldn’t make them, and I was terrified, because I’d loved being invisible but there used to be a choice, or I could pretend there was, and I realized that this would be my life forever, or maybe it had always been my life, and then a woman with the ugliest bangs I’d ever seen started yelling at Vicky.

“Vicky was sixteen. She’d only started two weeks ago, and whatever she’d done had been an honest mistake, nothing to warrant that sort of abuse. The woman wasn’t even listening when Vicky tried to offer a solution. She just wanted to yell. I hated her, in that moment. It wasn’t fair that she got to yell and scream and make Vicky’s life miserable, and I was stuck in some detached shadow realm where I couldn’t even step in to tell her off, or help Vicky fix the problem. She should be the one who was unnoticeable. She wasn’t adding anything, with her words. She should learn what it was like, to have no one hear her and no one look at her and no one acknowledge her presence. She would deserve it.

“And then I made it happen. I don’t know how, exactly: the same way you’re forcing me to tell this story, I suppose. One moment Vicky was flinching away, the next she was looking around in confusion and fear. The woman was still yelling, but Vicky couldn’t hear her. She looked around wildly and noticed me for the first time. She started yelling about horrible customer service, but I ignored her. I’m very good at ignoring people. I took her cart over to returns, and I put back everything she had tried to buy. I don’t know what happened to her. I assume she died, but I’ve never found a body, so maybe she just faded out of existence or something. I don’t know. I’ve never felt the need to watch.

“Does that satisfy your god, Archivist? Like I said, I need to finish stocking.”

“Thank you for your time, Petra.”

“Get out of my store. There’s an old man who comes in on Tuesdays and made Gianna cry last week. I want to catch him when he comes back, and I can’t do that with you Watching.”

The Archivist leaves, sated. That night, as Jon sleeps, his dreams are blocked off by a shroud of fog.


End file.
